A veteran Cosmonaut and two NASA Astronauts parachuted into the sunrise on Wednesday aboard their Soyuz MS-06 spacecraft after a half-year mission to the International Space Station, touching down on the snow-covered steppe of Kazakhstan after circling the Earth 2,688 times and covering 114.5 million Kilometers.

A veteran NASA spacewalker and an EVA rookie from Japan ended their week with nearly six hours of work outside the International Space Station on Friday to finish the restoration of the Station’s Mobile Servicing System that started last year and continued in January to provide Canadarm2 with a new pair of grappling hands.

Two Russian Cosmonauts had a trial of patience on Friday when working on the Service Module of the International Space Station to replace antiquated communications gear with new electronics to enable the Russian ISS Segment to connect to Russia’s Luch satellites positioned in Geostationary Orbit as high-altitude relay points.

Two Russian Cosmonauts are set for a complex six-hour and 40-minute spacewalk on Friday outside the International Space Station to work on the exterior of the Russian ISS Segment to replace communications gear on the Zvezda Service Module.

International Space Station managers decided on Sunday to postpone a scheduled spacewalk from Monday after additional diagnostics performed on the Station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm showed a connectivity problem on the primary command string of the newly-installed Latching End Effector could be solved through software.

Spacewalkers aboard the International Space Station will be forced to backtrack on Monday, reversing work completed on a January 23 excursion after controllers on the ground were unable to establish a redundant command path to the newly-installed grappling hand on the Station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station are gearing up for a pair of spacewalks on January 23 and 29 to complete the rejuvenation of the Station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm by replacing its second Latching End Effector to ensure the critical robotic asset remains in working order for capturing visiting vehicles, moving large equipment and carrying spacewalkers during complex EVA scenarios.

SpaceX’s Dragon C108.2 spacecraft departed the International Space Station after a month-long stay on Saturday via the first-ever ground-controlled release of a visiting vehicle, sending the spacecraft on a five-and-a-half hour return journey expected to culminate with a parachute-assisted splashdown landing